Evil Does Often Triumphby John Chuckmanwww.dissidentvoice.org
April 17, 2004

It
did appear that that mountainous bulk of murder and corruption, Ariel
Sharon, was about to leave politics. Much as with Al Capone, authorities
only caught up with him through a trail of crooked money.

But we have heard less of
his retirement lately and rather more about his plan to leave Gaza.
Apparently, after killing hundreds of its occupants, including scores of
innocent bystanders as Israeli helicopters fired missiles into city streets,
Sharon thinks he'll get some good press about leaving Gaza.

Of course, what Sharon
truly is leaving is an impossible situation. Gaza is a small, fenced-in
enclave of nearly a million Palestinians where only the most mentally
unbalanced Israeli settlers insist on living a life of guard towers, razor
wire, patrols, and spies. Sharon's army is tired of protecting a few
machinegun-toting fanatics, not to mention the small fortune it can save by
ending the protection.

The army will be able to do
a more efficient job by policing only the perimeter of the world's largest
open-air detention center. Access by land, air, and sea are tightly
controlled, although inmates are permitted on selected days to pass through
fences and checkpoints for jobs in Israel that Israelis will not take.

America's court-appointed
President, the remarkable man who spent a hundred billion dollars to set
Iraq in flames, characterized Sharon's initiative as "historic" and
"courageous," two words whose meanings there is no objective evidence he
even understands.

During the carefully-staged
ceremony in Washington, Bush suggested the U.S. will support Israel's
annexation of parts of the West Bank. How is Bush entitled to grant land he
neither owns nor occupies to a third party without so much as consulting
those who lived there for centuries and still often hold deeds? Apparently,
through no principle more dignified than might makes right.

The de facto border of
Israel keeps shifting eastward as new settlements sprawl out like Florida
land developments. The Palestinians are not to be permitted even their
miserable 22% of what once was called Palestine. Sharon's gang has always
wanted the West Bank, minus its inhabitants, carefully dressing up its
language in biblical terms that strike a special chord in the backwaters of
America. Of course, one just as reasonably could make a case for Greece
claiming parts of Turkey on the authority of the Iliad. The biblical claim
really is just that silly, but it carries weight in parts where children's
books are scrutinized for dire signs of witchcraft.

Sharon's government has
been a disaster both for the Palestinians and Israel. The world's reaction
to his behavior has been waves of severe criticism, but there also has been
ugly new expressions of anti-Semitism. A number of Israel's defenders work
to blur the distinction between these two things, hoping to silence
criticism. Reasonable people are driven to despair at being treated so
mindlessly.

I believe the extreme
sensitivity of many Jews to criticism of Israel's behavior actually reflects
the fact that it disturbs them too, although public expressions of their
distress are rare. Fierce pressure is felt by Jews who join criticism of
Israel, perhaps the most notable case being the Chief Rabbi of the United
Kingdom who not long ago spoke out quite forcefully on the subject and has
not been heard from since.

"It's easy to see which
side you support," was one of the more temperate negative responses I
received once to a piece about Israel and the Palestinians. Why must
Israel's critics be put in the position of supporting them or us? This kind
of stuff - them or us - is the wisdom proffered by the most pathetic
President in American history.

Critics emphasize
grievances against Israel because those grievances never receive the same
airing as those against the Palestinians. Indeed, there are many prominent
columnists, apologists for Israel's excesses, who frequently suggest
Palestinians are irrational, Thomas Friedman being only the most well-known
of them. Apart from the imbalance of voices in the press, there is simply a
great moral and ethical disproportion between the acts of desperate people
opposing occupation and organized suppression by a heavily-armed state.
Israel holds almost all the cards, so when nothing in the situation changes,
indeed when it grows far worse, how is Israel not responsible?

My original intention was
to write a piece about the departure of Sharon offering a fresh opportunity
for peace. Why not a peace initiative as inspired as the late President
Sadat's trip to Israel? But such things never do come from Israel, and what
we have now is almost its polar opposite.

It is difficult to
understand how Jews, consistently leaders in many struggles for human rights
and progress, continue to accept the circumstances of the West Bank and
Gaza. Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu, figures of unquestionable moral
authority and heroic resistance to tyranny, have both said that what they
see there is what they knew in apartheid South Africa. Only Sharon's
admirers, Bush's war-loving loonies, and Jerry Falwell's strange flock
awaiting the end of time are blind to this truth.

The suicide bombings that
have terrified Israelis come from utter despair. First came Barak's
contemptuous offer to Palestinians of a perpetual Bantustan at Camp David
after years of work over the Oslo Accords. This was followed by Sharon's
ugly behavior, including his provocative trip to the Temple Mount, seeking
to exploit fear. Sharon, a man directly responsible for war-time atrocities,
a man who always held the Oslo Accords in contempt, was elected Prime
Minister. Arafat, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been virtually imprisoned,
denied a voice in Washington, and threatened several times publicly with
murder. Now we have Bush hugging Sharon as though he had found a long-sought
father substitute. From the Palestinian perspective, it must appear an Iron
Curtain has descended.

Millions of people
throughout the world understand the necessary elements of a just and lasting
peace in the Middle East. The proposals of Israel's Gush Shalom - a group
dedicated to genuine peace, a group so often treated by Sharon's thugs as a
criminal or subversive organization - contains the key elements. A return to
the Green Line as Israel's border and Jerusalem's becoming capital for both
states are rational conditions for a stable peace. What is so difficult
about accepting them?

Instead, we have Sharon, a
man who has killed thousands of people, almost all civilians, hailed as
courageous. And he is hailed by a President fresh from killing women and
children in Fallujah.

John Chuckman
lives in Canada and is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil
company. He writes frequently for Yellow Times.org and other publications.